The penultimate question to the candidates was: is there any position you changed while in office upon achieving new insights into the legislative process? Biden said yes. When he arrived in the Judiciary Committee, he brought with him a belief from law school. It held that if a President nominates a qualified jurist for the Supreme Court, the Senate was bound to confirm the nominee. He soon came to conclude that ideology should also be considered as a factor, so he proudly fought the elevation of Judge Robert Bork to the court.
Then Biden was granted the privilege of offering a closing argument. In it he assured the audience that Senator Obama and he would govern in a bipartisan spirit.
This pair of presentations combine to shine a piercing light into the dark soul of the Democrat worldview. If we decode – or “unpack”, in the jargon – his first point, he is telling us that until he arrived there was a bipartisan custom in place for handling Supreme Court appointments. Distinction was the only criterion for a Supreme Court Justice, with no thought of the Senate playing an adversarial role in their Constitutionally mandated “advice and consent”. When Biden arrived he decided that would no longer do, and henceforth every confirmation hearing would become a partisan wrangle.
So his self-described epiphany involved his bringing “change” to the Senate by making it more partisan. Immediately thereafter, he promises to usher in a new era of post-partisan cooperation.
This, of course, slots in neatly alongside the reality of the post-partisan scenario Obama et al have been proclaiming all along: full and uncontested Democratic control of all three branches of government, running roughshod over any and all Republican opposition (since it is, in their view, fundamentally illegitimate).
--Shack
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